Multimedia

Primary Source

Frederick Douglass turns down an invitation to speak at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in 1870 when he learns that “the Directors of that popular Hall persist in refusing to allow it to be used for a lecture to which my race shall be admitted on terms of equality.”

Teaching Resource

All freedmen...over the age of eighteen years, found on the second Monday in January, 1866, or thereafter, with no lawful employment or business, or found unlawfully assembling themselves together, either in the day or night time, and all white persons so assembling with freedmen...shall be deemed vagrants, and on conviction thereof shall be fined in the sum of not exceeding in the crease of a freedman...fifty dollars, and a white man two hundred dollars, and imprisoned at the discretion...